Alternative suggestions for High Speed 2 (HS2) extensions and Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR)

[daodao]

Why this obsession with extending HS2 further north, yet alone NPR? The main benefits of a new high speed rail line are reducing journey times and increased capacity.

The need for the latter doesn't really apply north of Crewe on the western leg, where routes diverge to a number of different termini. Neither does it apply on the proposed eastern leg, given that there are 3 separate cities in the East Midlands that can't be served together, and that it is very difficult to design a high speed route via Sheffield to Leeds.

Reduced journey times are only really significant if the distance travelled is significant, probably at least 100 miles, so the benefit of high speed is really only significant for journeys to/from London, where the city centre itself is a particularly important destination and one which there are major hassles in driving to. It certainly doesn't apply to the short distances across the Pennines, or even to/from most of the West Midlands, except to a lesser extent Birmingham city centre itself.

Therefore, IMO it is only worthwhile building the first part of HS2 to Birmingham, and its extension to just north of Crewe (HS2a), where trains diverge for Manchester, Lancashire/Cumbria/Scotland, Liverpool and North Wales. A turn off could be built to enable trains to run to Sheffield as well via the existing ex-Midland main lines, calling at Burton, Derby and Chesterfield en route (2 tph). A residual 2 tph express service could be kept on the existing MML from St Pancras to Nottingham, calling at Leicester. One tph should diverge to run via Stafford, Stoke and Macclesfield to ensure these places are not left out.

 

[The Ham]

Why this obsession with extending HS2 further north, yet alone NPR? The main benefits of a new high speed rail line are reducing journey times and increased capacity.

The need for the latter doesn't really apply north of Crewe on the western leg, where routes diverge to a number of different termini. Neither does it apply on the proposed eastern leg, given that there are 3 separate cities in the East Midlands that can't be served together, and that it is very difficult to design a high speed route via Sheffield to Leeds.

Reduced journey times are only really significant if the distance travelled is significant, probably at least 100 miles, so the benefit of high speed is really only significant for journeys to/from London, where the city centre itself is a particularly important destination and one which there are major hassles in driving to. It certainly doesn't apply to the short distances across the Pennines, or even to/from most of the West Midlands, except to a lesser extent Birmingham city centre itself.

Therefore, IMO it is only worthwhile building the first part of HS2 to Birmingham, and its extension to just north of Crewe (HS2a), where trains diverge for Manchester, Lancashire/Cumbria/Scotland, Liverpool and North Wales. A turn off could be built to enable trains to run to Sheffield as well via the existing ex-Midland main lines, calling at Burton, Derby and Chesterfield en route (2 tph). A residual 2 tph express service could be kept on the existing MML from St Pancras to Nottingham, calling at Leicester. One tph should diverge to run via Stafford, Stoke and Macclesfield to ensure these places are not left out.

The reason is more to do with creating more station capacity.

Take Manchester for example, it's well known that there's capacity issues with the existing lines and platforms, how do we add NPR services to that?

Anyway, NPR does cut journey times, because of the low speeds and congestion on the of the existing lines

 

[Purple Orange]

Why this obsession with extending HS2 further north, yet alone NPR? The main benefits of a new high speed rail line are reducing journey times and increased capacity.

The need for the latter doesn't really apply north of Crewe on the western leg, where routes diverge to a number of different termini. Neither does it apply on the proposed eastern leg, given that there are 3 separate cities in the East Midlands that can't be served together, and that it is very difficult to design a high speed route via Sheffield to Leeds.

Reduced journey times are only really significant if the distance travelled is significant, probably at least 100 miles, so the benefit of high speed is really only significant for journeys to/from London, where the city centre itself is a particularly important destination and one which there are major hassles in driving to. It certainly doesn't apply to the short distances across the Pennines, or even to/from most of the West Midlands, except to a lesser extent Birmingham city centre itself.

Therefore, IMO it is only worthwhile building the first part of HS2 to Birmingham, and its extension to just north of Crewe (HS2a), where trains diverge for Manchester, Lancashire/Cumbria/Scotland, Liverpool and North Wales. A turn off could be built to enable trains to run to Sheffield as well via the existing ex-Midland main lines, calling at Burton, Derby and Chesterfield en route (2 tph). A residual 2 tph express service could be kept on the existing MML from St Pancras to Nottingham, calling at Leicester. One tph should diverge to run via Stafford, Stoke and Macclesfield to ensure these places are not left out.

Being in Dunham or in Bowdon, you stand to benefit from the improved services. Or does the line go too near to your house?

 

[quantinghome]

Why this obsession with extending HS2 further north, yet alone NPR? The main benefits of a new high speed rail line are reducing journey times and increased capacity.

The need for the latter doesn't really apply north of Crewe on the western leg, where routes diverge to a number of different termini. Neither does it apply on the proposed eastern leg, given that there are 3 separate cities in the East Midlands that can't be served together, and that it is very difficult to design a high speed route via Sheffield to Leeds.

Reduced journey times are only really significant if the distance travelled is significant, probably at least 100 miles, so the benefit of high speed is really only significant for journeys to/from London, where the city centre itself is a particularly important destination and one which there are major hassles in driving to. It certainly doesn't apply to the short distances across the Pennines, or even to/from most of the West Midlands, except to a lesser extent Birmingham city centre itself.

Therefore, IMO it is only worthwhile building the first part of HS2 to Birmingham, and its extension to just north of Crewe (HS2a), where trains diverge for Manchester, Lancashire/Cumbria/Scotland, Liverpool and North Wales. A turn off could be built to enable trains to run to Sheffield as well via the existing ex-Midland main lines, calling at Burton, Derby and Chesterfield en route (2 tph). A residual 2 tph express service could be kept on the existing MML from St Pancras to Nottingham, calling at Leicester. One tph should diverge to run via Stafford, Stoke and Macclesfield to ensure these places are not left out.

The basic principle is that the current "jack of all trades" railway is massively destructive of capacity. A line with trains all on the same stopping could have 12+ trains per hour. As it stands most lines in the country, especially those in Northern cities, have to cope with a mix of local, regional, intercity and freight trains, which cuts capacity down two or threefold. If you want cities like Leeds and Manchester to have metro frequencies on local lines then you need to put the intercity trains somewhere else. Hence why HS2 includes brand new lines into city centres.

The journey over the Pennines from Leeds to Manchester is only 40 miles or so but takes ages - less than 50 mph average speed. It needs to be half and hour tops, and that needs a new line. But NPR is not just about short journeys, it's about journeys like Liverpool - Newcastle as well, which need their times cutting down significantly, where higher speeds will be important. Likewise journey times from West Midlands to Yorkshire are dreadful at the moment. 2 hours from Leeds to Birmingham, just awful. Should be under an hour. Again, you need new lines for that.

 

[edwin_m]

Why this obsession with extending HS2 further north, yet alone NPR? The main benefits of a new high speed rail line are reducing journey times and increased capacity.

The need for the latter doesn't really apply north of Crewe on the western leg, where routes diverge to a number of different termini. Neither does it apply on the proposed eastern leg, given that there are 3 separate cities in the East Midlands that can't be served together, and that it is very difficult to design a high speed route via Sheffield to Leeds.

Reduced journey times are only really significant if the distance travelled is significant, probably at least 100 miles, so the benefit of high speed is really only significant for journeys to/from London, where the city centre itself is a particularly important destination and one which there are major hassles in driving to. It certainly doesn't apply to the short distances across the Pennines, or even to/from most of the West Midlands, except to a lesser extent Birmingham city centre itself.

Therefore, IMO it is only worthwhile building the first part of HS2 to Birmingham, and its extension to just north of Crewe (HS2a), where trains diverge for Manchester, Lancashire/Cumbria/Scotland, Liverpool and North Wales. A turn off could be built to enable trains to run to Sheffield as well via the existing ex-Midland main lines, calling at Burton, Derby and Chesterfield en route (2 tph). A residual 2 tph express service could be kept on the existing MML from St Pancras to Nottingham, calling at Leicester. One tph should diverge to run via Stafford, Stoke and Macclesfield to ensure these places are not left out.

The WCML north of Crewe is mainly two-track and is one of those routes where the difference between fast and slow (mainly freight in this case) trains eats up capacity. Although the business case may be difficult to make, it can't be denied that there is very little spare capacity on either the WCML or the ECML and no simple/cheap way of increasing it significantly. If not a high speed route throughout, it would need some lengthy sections of high speed infrastructure that could act as dynamic loops so the slower trains could stay on the existing route at existing speeds and new, faster, trains could overtake on the new sections. Doing this with the WCML would also relieve the ECML because London-Edinburgh traffic could be routed that way - it's more difficult to upgrade the ECML and expect it to take much London-Glasgow traffic.

I should also point out that some of the largest time savings forecast for HS2 phase 2b are Cross Country journeys such as Birmingham to Leeds. This is because the current route is relatively slow, and (unlike London to Leeds or the North East) HS2 provides a fairly direct route. This is partly the logic for me to suggest HS2 eastern leg should provide a way out of Birmingham towards Derby and Nottingham and separately a link between Leeds and Sheffield including a Doncaster bypass for the ECML.

The issue isn't that through stations don't have more capacity, but rather to obtain that capacity costs a lot more but the capacity isn't proportionally more when compared to the cost increases.

It's not so much the station itself, but the approaches and how they fit into the urban area.

For Birmingham there is one fairly easy approach route where a line can be built partly on the surface. This is the M6/Tame Valley route chosen for HS2. Continuing this route onwards would involve a long tunnel probably emerging somewhere in the Walsall or Sutton Coldfield area, and the Curzon Street station would either need its western throat putting underground or to move further from the city so the throat was on the surface (not sure there is space for that either).

For Manchester a long tunnel is already needed to access the station, but the station itself can be on the surface. If trains from the south entered the station from the west, the tunnel wouldn't be much longer but it would be shallow under the city centre which could cause some problems, unless the station was buried deeper. At least one throat of the station would also be underground.

 

[The Ham]

The WCML north of Crewe is mainly two-track and is one of those routes where the difference between fast and slow (mainly freight in this case) trains eats up capacity. Although the business case may be difficult to make, it can't be denied that there is very little spare capacity on either the WCML or the ECML and no simple/cheap way of increasing it significantly. If not a high speed route throughout, it would need some lengthy sections of high speed infrastructure that could act as dynamic loops so the slower trains could stay on the existing route at existing speeds and new, faster, trains could overtake on the new sections. Doing this with the WCML would also relieve the ECML because London-Edinburgh traffic could be routed that way - it's more difficult to upgrade the ECML and expect it to take much London-Glasgow traffic.

I should also point out that some of the largest time savings forecast for HS2 phase 2b are Cross Country journeys such as Birmingham to Leeds. This is because the current route is relatively slow, and (unlike London to Leeds or the North East) HS2 provides a fairly direct route. This is partly the logic for me to suggest HS2 eastern leg should provide a way out of Birmingham towards Derby and Nottingham and separately a link between Leeds and Sheffield including a Doncaster bypass for the ECML.

It's not so much the station itself, but the approaches and how they fit into the urban area.

For Birmingham there is one fairly easy approach route where a line can be built partly on the surface. This is the M6/Tame Valley route chosen for HS2. Continuing this route onwards would involve a long tunnel probably emerging somewhere in the Walsall or Sutton Coldfield area, and the Curzon Street station would either need its western throat putting underground or to move further from the city so the throat was on the surface (not sure there is space for that either).

For Manchester a long tunnel is already needed to access the station, but the station itself can be on the surface. If trains from the south entered the station from the west, the tunnel wouldn't be much longer but it would be shallow under the city centre which could cause some problems, unless the station was buried deeper. At least one throat of the station would also be underground.

Indeed, as I was typing my post I was aware that if you've got one route into an urban area then it's going to be broadly half the cost of needing two (over simplification, as the distances may not be as big and/or you may not need to tunnel one of them, but you get the idea).

 

[Purple Orange]

I feel like HS2 is too far gone for there to be significant changes to the plan, but NPR on the other hand has a whole host of possibilities. I think there is significant chance NPR will be reduced to TRU with full electrification, but other than the unlikely new line via Bradford, we could see a bypass tunnel.